ow of Jidjelli, and all I wanted to know on such an
evening. The sound of the surf on the rocks was better to hear when it
was not so close. We followed that coast all night while I lay awake,
shaking to the racing of the propeller; and I blessed the unknown
engineers of the North Country who took forethought of nights of that
kind when doing their best for _Celestine_; for, though bruised, I
still loved her above Algiers and Timgad. She had character, she had
set her course, and she was holding steadily to it, and did not pray
the uncompassionate to change its face.

III

For more than a week we washed about in the surf of a high, dark coast
towards Tunis. We might have been on the windward side of Ultima Thule.
Supposing you could have been taken miraculously from your fogs and
midday lamps of London, and put with me in the _Celestine_, and told
that that sullen land looming through the murk could be yours, if you
could guess its name, then you would have guessed nothing below the
fortieth parallel.

No matter; when you were told, you would have laughed at your loss. Now
you understood why it was called the Dark Continent. It looked the home
of slavery, murder, rhinoceroses, the Congo, war, human sacrifices, and
gorillas. It had the forefront of the world of skulls and horrors,
ultimatums, mining concessions, chains, and development. Its rulers
would be throned on bone-heaps. You will say (of course you will say)
that I saw Africa like that because I was weary of the place. Not at
all. I was merely looking at it. The feeling had been growing on me
since first I saw Africa at Oran, where I landed. The longer I stay,
the more depressed I get.

This has nothing to do with the storm. This African shadow does not
chill you because you wish you were home, and home is far away. It does
not come of your rare and lucky idleness, in which you have to do
nothing but enjoy yourself; generally a sufficient reason for
melancholy, though rarely so in my own case. No, Africa itself is the
reason. There is an invisible emanation from its soil, the aura of evil
in antiquity. You cannot see it, at first you are unaware it is there,
and cannot know, therefore, what is the matter with you. This haunting
premonition is different from mere wearying and boredom. It gets worse,
the longer you stay; it goes deeper than sadness, it descends into a
conviction of something that is without hope, that is bad in its
nature, and unrepentant in